Consulting Team Meeting September 17, 2013 Common Core Update, Expert Teams, What’s New

1. Consulting Team MeetingSeptember 17, 2013Common Core Update, Expert Teams, What’s New

2. Agenda for Our Call This Morning! • Hi and Welcome! • Insights from reading – how many standards to be taught + more on close reading • Concept of “fidelity to the standards”? • SBAC Scoring Guide • PARCC info update – released item analysis + language of the assessment/types of questions • Expert Team Updates • What’s New at JC • Next Steps

3. How Many Standards Should Be Taught in One Lesson?

4. A-ha on the Common Core - 1 I think it is imperative that teachers understand that there are not 20 reading comprehension standards at each grade level, but only 10. CCSS shows how these 10 standards look in literary and informational texts, hence the confusion that these constitute 20 separate standards. There are also 10 writing standards, and these overlap in important ways with the reading standards (see items 7-8-9). My point is that it will be helpful to see these lists in the most economical ways possible. Fewer standards will give you greater purchase on the entire set. The Louisiana materials--by listing each standard repeatedly for each unit--magnifies the problem of too many items to focus on; it should be striving to reduce the load, not increase it. Tim Shanahan

5. A-ha on the Common Core - 2 Second, the categories are as important as the individual standards (since the categories reveal the purposes of what are in each set). The Louisiana plan misses this key point and it is part of the reason the guidance is so overwhelming. For example, the first three reading standards emphasize that readers need to be able to grasp the “key ideas and details” of the texts they read. They should, for instance, be able to summarize what they read, or answer questions about what the text said explicitly or implied. Looking at these categorically will help you to see them in a more coherent way. The Louisiana materials encourage a more fragmented approach, and teachers are overwhelmed by all the little pieces. Tim Shanahan

6. A-ha on the Common Core - 3 Third, it is important to understand that standards are not synonymous with curriculum (something that CCSS has stressed repeatedly). If you are trying to teach students to make sense of a text’s key ideas and details what do you need to teach to get them there? It might be helpful to teach them to identify a main idea or how to paraphrase; or some kind of note-taking might help. By just matching outcomes with texts/assignments, the whole idea of curriculum has been washed away. Louisiana’s guidance neglects this basic point—again, confusing things. Tim Shanahan

7. This is Where We Differ… Which standards to address will vary from text-to-text. But this variation should not be linked to some pacing guide or curriculum guidance. It should be linked to the specific texts or tasks students are engaged with. Individual standards will match better with some texts or reading circumstances. For example, if a unit includes only a single text, you might have the students evaluate it in some way, but you probably wouldn’t have them comparing it with other texts. But remember, not every lesson will be the focus of close reading. The idea of mixing in other readings/exercises/lessons in which students practice a particular comprehension strategy or analyze particular aspect of a text can be mixed in, too. Research shows that such lessons can bear fruit. While such analysis or practice is not included in the standards (because this analysis or practice is not an outcome), it can be an important avenue to ensuring that students reach the standards.

8. Another A-ha on Cold/Close Reading First, Common Core doesn’t use the term, “cold read.” It appears to be meant as a pejorative for close reading, though it only characterizes one dimension of close reading (the withholding of information from outside the text—while ignoring its emphasis on how texts work and the use of text evidence in interpretation). Close reading sounds warm and cuddly (“let’s get close”); while cold reading is, well, cold.

9. Another A-ha on Cold/Close Reading The problem is that teachers have too often allowed precious classroom reading time to be waylaid by errant discussions of student background; discussions that may be irrelevant to interpreting the text, that may reinforce students’ existing misconceptions; and that, even when focused appropriately, may be more extensive than necessary to prepare students to take on a text effectively. It is easy to mistake a lively discussion of family funerals (oxymoron intended) as a sign of student engagement; it may be, but it is not an engagement in reading.

10. New Term???? “Fidelity to the Standards”

11. SBAC Scoring Guides – WOW! http://sbac.portal.airast.org/practice-test/resources/#scoring

12. PARCC Released More Sample Tasks

13. Expert Team Updates!

14. New! CCSS Expert Team Modules! http://jackson-consulting.com/common-core-module-sneak-peek Password: sneakpeek

15. Next steps for our team…